One Man ArmyReview

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Tower Defense with a twist.

By Justin Davis

One Man Army from Tickled Pink Games and Chillingo is commendable for attempting to break new ground in the often-stale tower defense genre. Unfortunately, the game's innovations fail almost as often as they succeed. Couple this uneven gameplay with bland, uninspired presentation and you have a recipe for a mediocre tower defense title.

Like most tower defense games, the enemies in One Man Army follow predetermined paths through a stage, and the player has to stop them from exiting the far side of the screen. If too many escape, it is game over.

The player character himself is bunkered up in the bottom middle of the screen. A key difference from other TD titles is that the player directly plays a part in ensuring no enemies escape, instead of relying solely on placed towers. Players fire at the enemy by tapping on the screen to aim.

Using a combination of built towers and player-directed fire is a cornerstone of One Man Army. A winning strategy for early waves is often to build towers on one half of the map, and handle the other half directly, via your character's never-ending supply of machine gun ammo.

All that firepower is more necessary than ever, because enemies in One Man Army can actually fight back. The player has a health bar, and certain enemies will occasionally pause on their routes to fire a gun or lob a projectile, draining a bit of health.

One Man Army's final "big idea" is also perhaps its most significant. Each of the game's six maps are split into six distinct levels. The catch? A player's bankroll and tower placement carries over from one level to the next. So if you built some towers in a less-than-optimum spot, they will still be there in future levels, making it that much harder to progress. But on the bright side, if you manage to make it through early levels without spending much dough, you'll have a bigger bankroll to spend on later levels.

Ultimately, many of One Man Army's genre tweaks only serve to bring down the game's fun factor. The idea of player health is interesting, but in practice it only serves to frustrate. Much of the damage a player takes can't be avoided, so there is no choice but to save up for health packs. Likewise, the idea of tower placements persisting across levels means that it might take several stages to realize and correct a mistake. Most of these complaints might be forgivable if One Man Army had a great style or premise, but the title is largely charmless. The color palette is all greys and browns. The nameless protagonist is entirely generic. The enemy designs are a little more interesting, but their polygonal in-game models are lacking.

One Man Army

The few remaining safe human settlements are under threat from a mutant invasion. Fight back against them using a variety of weapons in this action packed mix of shooter and tower defense gameplay!

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The Verdict

One Man Army is competent and highly challenging tower defense game. Genre veterans should enjoy its high difficulty level and fresh ideas. Casual genre fans or tower defense newbies will be turned off by the game&#Array;s lack of personality and its more frustrating aspects.